How to Make a Nice Spiced Tea (chai)

Introduction: How to Make a Nice Spiced Tea (chai)

Thistea recipe is for those who enjoy taking care of their body, those who might have digstion problems, those who enjoy making, and drinking tea, or for those who would just like to try something new. This type of tea, also called Chai, finds it's origins in India. There are many different ways to experiment with this infusion, and I encourage you to do so. This is merely the recipe I eventually came up with, and ended up using nearly every day.

Step 1:

Fill a saucepan with roughly 1 glass of water. Keep in mind that we will be adding milk, but that some of the water will evaporate during the process. It might some tries to get the amounts of liquid right.

Begin by crushing the cardamon pods, the seeds inside that provide the taste will need to be able to breathe to make their taste infuse with the water.

Step 2:

Peel the ginger, and slice it as thinly as your patience allows. Avoid grating the ginger. Most of the taste in ginger is in the fluids, which are often lost during that process. I prefer using a good old potato-knife.

Watch your fingers!

Step 3: Addings

Add the ginger, cardamon, cinnamon, black pepper corns, bayleaves, star-anis and cloves to the saucepan. And slowly bring it to boil. Remember to keep the lid on it, or we will loose essential taste!

Once our mixture has reached the point of boiling, turn the gaspit as low as possible, and let it gently simmer on the low fire for about 10 minutes, still leaving the lid on.

Step 4: The Milk

After our mixture has gotten a nice coloration. It is time to add the milk. Not much is necessary, we wan't the mixture to turn into an off-white, creamy looking substance, losing all it's transparency.

Step 5: Black Tea

Keep the low fire on, put the lid back on, and wait an additional 5 minutes to let the flavored water get a chance to mix with the milk.

Now we can turn the fire off, and add 2 teaspoons of black/darjeeling tea. Give the tea about 2 minutes to infuse with the rest of the lot.

Step 6: The End

Strain, and add sugar. I prefer this drink as a mildly sweet beverage, adding about 2,5 teaspoons of (brown) sugar.

Server, and enjoy.

Note:
If you are in possession of good quality cinnamon, it can be used twice, or in some cases three times before it loses it's power. Give the cinnamon stick a quick wiff before cleaning up, if it smells like cinnamon, it can be used in your next tea.

This tea mixture if perfect for after a large meal. It helps the body digest the food. And because of the ginger and the pepper, you might notice a "clearing of the airways" due to "spiciness".
Drinking this tea on a regular basis should provide a healthy metabolism, and will help your bowl-system to keep your body in a good shape.

II looked up the word "metabolism" after your reply, to see if I perhaps meant something else. But no, I mean the processing of substances within the living body.

Ginger, cardamon and cloves are considered to have the herbal "action" of aiding the digestion system. I'm no biology expert, but that seems to fall under the "processing of substances" idea.

Knowledge on herbs is as freely available as knowledge on any other subject. I collect mine from a fairly respected herbal from Margaret Grieve.

Maybe your talking about the "help keep your body in good shape" part. It does exactly that, it helps. It doesn't achieve, or give. It helps. So for people that are into taking care of there body etc., this will help a bit with that.

I think the part "should provide a healthy metabolism" creates some misunderstanding perhaps. Maybe "should provide a healthier metabolism" would have been more correct. Instead of an actual so called, healthy metabolism.

Because facts broken down, drinking an infusing of the herbs and spices in question, on a fairly regular basis, should provide a healthier metabolism.

Herbs are not magic, or necessarily better then not herbs. Claims to the contrary are typically spurious. Consider the source of herbal knowledge, most of the people pushing herbalism are charlatons and frauds, and the claims of herbalism does not hold up to scientific scrutiny.

That said, healthy, or healthier metabolism is an unusual thing to say... Your metabolism is not really at danger of being unhealthy.

It seems sad that some people make a hobby out of finding ways to be cynical and pick people apart online. This is a person sharing a wonderful recipe, it is not as though they are selling a product or trying to "push" anything on anyone!

I'm sorry Mandrew, but the things you are saying have nothing to do with the instructable I have made.

I am not claiming herbs are magic, or better then synthetic substances that provide the same thing. Your comment is giving me the idea you want to have a discussion just for the sake of having a discussion. If I would have said "Try this magic herbal substance to replace your synthetic medicine" you would have been completely correct. But this is not the case. This is not an instructable comparing traditional vs. synthetic medicine.

I am not claiming this is a tea that it can be substituted with any synthetical substance someone might be using. If that was the case, I would have complete understood your comments, and your need to discuss this with me.

I understand metabolism's are not considered something that cause danger, and I agree with this. People surely survive without aiding their bodies in any way, this again, is a completely different subject of conversation. I never said metabolism's are in danger of being unhealthy. That, sir, is a bold claim.

Every instructable here in some way can use tweaking, so that's not a big deal. A big deal, however, is that this is an AWESOME recipe! I've never put bay leaf in my chai before, but you can dang sure count on the fact that I will from here on out. MMM!!!! I love the clean and fresh flavor of bay, and suddenly can't understand why I've not put it in before.